Conflict and Coffee in Burundi 105reinforce and perpetuate the regional and ethnic characteristics of that elite.
The army, the state and the tiny private sector in Burundi have received the
vast majority of resources. In contrast, the agricultural sector, which is the
main source of exports as well as the occupation for the vast majority of the
population, is seriously under-resourced. Regionally, Bujumbura and Bururi
provinces receive far more than their fair share of investment. In general, the
rural/urban divide in economic development is extreme.52
Sectorial Distribution
HammoudaS3 shows that state economic policy changed dramatically from
1972 in terms of relative levels of investment in agriculture compared to the
industrial and service sectors. Until 1972, the agricultural sector, which
employs more than 90% of Burundi's workforce and produces its main
export commodities as well as the food needed to sustain its population,
received around 65% of total public investment. The industrial and service
sectors, which together made up approximately 40% of value added as a per-
centage of GDP in 1980, received 36% of public investment. After 1972. coin-
ciding with the epoch of most concentrated Banyabururi power, this rela-
tionship shifted radically: investment in agriculture dropped to between
20-30 % in the period 1972-1992 and industry received between 70-80%
over the same period. This compares to the sectorial ranking as a percentage
of GDP: agriculture 46%, services 37.7%, industry 16.7%. Clearly, the coun-
try's economic backbone, agriculture, has been comparatively disadvantaged
in government investment decision^.^^
Subsistence food cropping is not lucrative in terms of opportunities for
rent seeking, partly explaining the lack of investment within predatory logic.
Nevertheless, the regulations that do exist have the purpose of generating
rents. Ngaruko and Nkurunzizass note that the pricing and distribution poli-
cies concerning agriculture which are in place make it dependent on the mea-
gre Burundian industrial sector as a market (i.e. agriculture supplies indus-
trial inputs) without there being a reverse input of industrial products (like
fertiliser and tools) into agriculture. According to Ngaruko,j6 this is a policy
held over from colonial times.
Predation of the coffee industry, which is the main source of foreign exchange
income for the government, acts as a 'cash cow uninhibited by external scruti-
ny'. As a result of state neglect of agriculture, combined with the fa13 of high
population density and growth, and shrinking land allocation for individual
farming families, there is a lack of increase in productivity. There is already a
shortfall in food production, compared to national food needs, and this is likely
to increase. State neglect of agriculture, therefore, directly leads to the increased
probability of famine. A widespread famine is the most direct sign of a govern-
ment's failure to care for its people. The ongoing policy of neglect has been exac-
erbated by the conflict since 1993, through the internal displacement of much of